Simple and Sweet Chocolate Chip Cookies

Making cookies is way more fun with an assistant (my son, Gabe)

I don't think there is another dessert or snack that takes us back to our childhood like chocolate chip cookies can.  They're simple, delicious, and comforting--and addicting.  I love whipping up a quick batch of cookies, and it's fun to have my son "help" me.

I just use the basic recipe from the bag of Hershey's or Nestle Toll House chocolate chips, but I use pastry flour instead of all-purpose flour.  Pastry flour has less gluten (the protein found in wheat flour) than all-purpose flour, so the cookies are more tender. I use my own, homemade vanilla extract (and I double the amount listed in the recipe).   I also found some AMAZING chocolate chips at the Willy St. Coop (Middleton, WI location--in the bulk section).  They are a really nice dark, bittersweet chocolate and totally took my cookies to the next level of deliciousness. 

Here are a few tips to making excellent cookies.  First of all, and probably most important (besides using quality ingredients) is to scale all ingredients accurately and have the ingredients at room temperature.  If the butter and eggs are too cold, (especially the butter), you'll probably incur one of the most common cookie faults: spreading (you know, cookies that melt into each other on the pan and are super flat).  If the butter is too cold, you're more likely over-mix the butter and sugar because you'll have to use the mixer to soften the butter. This adds too much air into the batter, which leads to cookies spreading too much.  The same thing goes for the eggs being too cold.  You'll have to beat the mixture longer in order to incorporate the eggs and you'll add too much air.

If you use pastry flour like I do, you  need to scale the flour by weight because the pastry flour weighs less per cup than all purpose flour.  One cup of all purpose flour weighs about 4.5 oz and one cup of pastry flour weighs just under 4.25 oz.  If you don't have a kitchen scale, you'll need about 1 Tablespoon (just slightly under, actually) extra pastry flour per cup.  If your recipe calls for 2.25 cups of all-purpose flour, you'll use the 2.25 cups plus an additional 2 Tablespoons and about 1 teaspoon of pastry flour.  It doesn't seem like a huge difference in weight, but by converting to volume, you can see that it could make a difference in your end result if you leave it out of your recipe.

A few other tips for cookies...
Make sure your oven is at the temperature specified in your recipe.  If the temperature is too low, your cookies will spread too much.  If it's too high, you'll over bake them. 

Unless the recipe specifies otherwise, remove the cookies from the pan to a cooling rack within a minute or so of removing them from the oven.  Leaving them to cool on the pan will cause the bottoms to continue to bake and you'll get dark bottoms.


If you can find high-quality, dark chocolate chips, your cookies will take on a more sophisticated flavor.


I hope you enjoy your cookies!  I know my family enjoyed this batch...As usual, they didn't last long!


So long for now and stay obsessed with sweets!